The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel released a report “No Second Thoughts: Changes in the IDF’s Combat Doctrine In Light of Operation Cast Lead.” The report explains how the IDF’s shift of priority from minimizing civilian casualties to minimizing IDF casualties constitutes deliberate harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure — in violation of international [...]
Archive for the 'War' Category
Public Committee Against Torture in Israel: Report on IDF changes in policy during Gaza operation
January 31st, 2010 Filed under: Israel and War. 0 Comments
Erev Hadash TV interview: Breaking the Silence supporter creams Im Tirtzu sloganeer
Rami Hoyberger debating the Im Tirtzu supporter here is like sandblasting a Saltine. Rami Hoyberger is an Israeli actor who’s signed onto the Rabbis for Human Rights petition for an independent investigation into the Cast Lead war in Gaza, as suggested is necessary by testimonies collected by Breaking the Silence.
Im Tirtzu is a self-declared [...]
January 22nd, 2010 Filed under: Israel and War. 0 Comments
Mercaz Harav’s rules of just war: you can kill anyone
I’m a student of just war theories. They fascinate me. World War II and the Holocaust altered international law and consciousness on huge scales. The foundation of what is acceptable and what it not in warfare today is an attempt to prevent a World War III that would again kill countless civilians or fail to [...]
December 13th, 2009 Filed under: Judaism and War. 1 Comment
Gaza in the New Yorker
There’s something to be said that topics as complicated as the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations over Gaza can only be done justice in journalism as lengthy as The New Yorker. Well, here you go: Gaza, Gilad Shalit, Hamas, and Israel.
The article is an amazing peice of first-hand journalism. Lawrence Wright not only interviews Hamas and [...]
November 3rd, 2009 Filed under: Israel and War. 0 Comments
Killing Gazans like killing Germans
Netanyahu makes me so angry. My disgust with his approach to the conflict, to economics, to social needs and to international court of opinion spills over into my feelings for the State of Israel itself. I received in an email forward (the most trustworthy sources of information on earth, mind you) describing how Bibi Netanyahu, [...]
October 17th, 2009 Filed under: Israel and War. 0 Comments
We’re not trashing the IDF for fun, we’re saving her soul
Redacted from a comment I made on Jewschool which perhaps I’ve not made clear so far:
Let’s take a step back: neither I nor Breaking the Silence are in a battle to tarnish the IDF wantonly. It may feel that way. But I’m not. Because I’ve worked so closely with the Breaking the Silence staff, their patriotism is irrefutable [...]
July 20th, 2009 Filed under: Israel, War and X-posted to Jewschool. 0 Comments
Al Jazeera: IDF “no longer the most moral army in the world”
A must read: Mikhael Manekin: Gaza Operation: Israeli Soldiers Tell A Different Story Than Official Military Line | HuffPost.com. Also see Ibn Ezra’s new site and the Magnes Zionist.
July 15th, 2009 Filed under: Israel and War. 0 Comments
IDF says Breaking the Silence is lying, what shit
The Breaking the Silence Gaza testimonies are out — and damning. I wrote up a summary for your perusal. This morning the IDF spokesperson pulled the usual shit and claimed that the words of their own soldiers are lies:
What shit. Just read the testominies and there’s enough information to determine where, when, and under whose [...]
July 15th, 2009 Filed under: Israel, Published elsewhere and War. 1 Comment
Rise to kill them first
Oft is the anecdote that every Israeli child can recite the Talmudic instruction “If a man comes to kill you, rise to kill him first.”
Of course it’s also remarked that too few know the second part of that edict, saying that if you must kill a third person to prevent a second person from killing [...]
June 17th, 2009 Filed under: Judaism and War. 0 Comments
A Religious War in Israel’s Army
By Ethan Bronner in the NY Times, a report on the effect of orthodox pre-military academies and officers on military ethics. Mostly, the accusations of secular, Western-minded humanist Israelis against the right-wing Modern Orthodox.
It is very scary that Israel’s military is being more influenced by Jews who believe that fighting Arabs is a sacred [...]
March 23rd, 2009 Filed under: Israel and War. 0 Comments
